In case you missed last week's "Demolition Derby" episode of Mythbusters (quite possibly the greatest symphony of automotive destruction ever committed to film) they destroyed a Ford Aspire with a rocket sled traveling 646 MPH.

This episode once again proves Adam and Jamie have the greatest job in the history of the world. They revisted a myth in which two tractor trailers simultaneously collide with a opposite ends of a compact car at a high rate of speed and the carnage causes the two trucks to fuse, hiding the car between them. After improving their rig over the essentially failed experiment from three years ago, they proved you can smash two trucks together simultaneously, but didn't see any fusing or a hidden pancake car.

As they always do, the pair took things to extremes and traveled to New Mexico Tech's straight track rocket testing facility. The plan was to build a two stage, multi-engine rocket sled with a one inch thick steel plate at the front. When fired the sled would accelerate to around 650 MPH and collide with an ill-fated Ford Aspire, the entire event recorded for posterity on high speed cameras.

Let's be very clear here: This is probably the coolest thing these guys have ever done. The Aspire doesn't so much crumple as it sublimates from the force of the sled. The debris field is perhaps as spectacular, spread out behind and around the earthen berm, there's almost nothing recognizable of either the car or the sled. The metal plate is twisted into a little curl. The forces involved here are spectacular, and yet they did not get the metals to fuse together.

The combined man hours of every Korean who designed the original vehicle and every Ford engineer who adapted it for the US market, the program managers, the workers on the line who assembled it, every marketing maven, and salesman who made the Aspire possible have now been justified in their effort if for this experiment alone. (Thanks for the tip on the video Matt) [Youtube]